South of the Border, West of the Sun

A Novel

By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel - translator

Narrated by: Eric Loren

South of the Border, West of the Sun is the beguiling story of a past rekindled, and one of Haruki Murakami’s most touching novels.

Hajime has arrived at middle age with a loving family and an enviable career, yet he feels incomplete. When a childhood friend, now a beautiful woman, shows up with a secret from which she is unable to escape, the fault lines of doubt in Hajime’s quotidian existence begin to give way. Rich, mysterious, and quietly dazzling, in South of the Border, West of the Sun the simple arc of one man’s life becomes the exquisite literary terrain of Murakami’s remarkable genius.

Critic reviews

Praise for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle:

"A labyrinth designed by a master, at once familiar and irresistibly strange."--Janice P. Nimura, San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle

Murakami [is] some kind of wizard...The apparent simplicity of his expression... nearly disguises the fact that The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is, in the most time-honored sense, an epic...Every character, every story, nearly every circumstantial detail, appears to connect with every other in some ectoplasmic cat's cradle."--Luc Sante, New York

Mesmerizing...A major work...A love story one minute, a detective story the next, a psychological thriller, a New Age--ish bildungsroman, a sober chronicle of wartime atrocities, a meditation on historical guilt, and more, in dizzying succession...Murakami's most ambitious attempt yet to stuff all of modern Japan into a single fictional edifice." --Elizabeth Ward, Washington Post Book World

A postwar successor [to] the Big Three of modern Japanese literature--Mishima, Kawabata, and Tanizaki...A cool forty-eight-year-old who once ran a jazz bar [and] has translated John Irving, Truman Capote, and Raymond Carver into Japanese, [Murakami] has been perfectly positioned to serve as the voice of hip, Westernized Japan...Yet none of his earlier books prepare one for his massive new Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which digs relentlessly into the buried secrets of Japan's recent past." --Pico Iyer, Time

A bold and generous book...Straight-ahead storytelling [that] never loses its propulsive force...Western critics searching for parallels have variously likened him to Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Arthur C. Clarke, Don DeLillo, Philip K. Dick, Bret Easton Ellis, and Thomas Pynchon--a roster so ill assorted that Murakami may in fact be an original." --Jamie James, New York Times Book Review

A beguiling sense of mystery suffuses The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and draws us irresistibly and ever deeper into the phantasmagoria of pain and memory... 'Every secret struggles to reveal itself,' Isaac Bashevis Singer once wrote. That's exactly what happens [here], and that's precisely why the book is so compelling and ultimately so convincing." --Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Emotional, deep in thought

Loved the book! It's full real life situations and thoughts, ideas that actually leave you thinking after reading... Ideas that leave you deep in thought about your own love life, about how love feels like itself and how fragile a life and or relationships can be.

Another great one from Murakami

Life is full of different experiences and challenges. Once again Murakami has given us a small peek at the unending possibilities of life and it’s lessons, as well as something to think about.

Interesting relationships, bland voice-acting

The story of this is just about an average Japanese male going through the tedium of life, like many Murakami novels. Like many Murakami novels, this man falls in love with a woman, to the point of obsession, however, he's married and has two children. The rest of the book revolves around this and how this obsession affects and changes his life, maybe for the better?

I really enjoyed the book, I think that it is very dry, for a Murakami book, but the length makes up for it. The relationships and how these relationships reflect upon the protagonist are maybe the most interesting part of the book. If you've ever read Murakami before, you know many of his protagonists are typically the silent, stoic, yet self-absorbed type. This is still the case in South of the Border, but Murakami reflects on this character-type and analyses how these kind of people actually work in the world, as well as how they affect the people around them, maybe for the worse?

The narration is alright, it's very bland, but kind of plays into the monotony of the protagonist's life. It doesn't make it that easy to listen to, unfortunately.

Overall, good Murakami in its shortest form.

Same World

Haruki Murakami has this unique gift at putting the reader in the same world in each book. Whenever I start reading any of his books, I'm instantly transported in the same place where I left off in a different story. If you are not a fan of this author, you won't understand at what I'm talking about. All of his books has a similar theme to them. The characters might be named differently, but they all follow the same path of metaphors.

"South of the Border, West of the Sun" is one of the best short novels that I've read from Haruki Murakami. It's hard to explain how I feel about this book because Murakami is one of my favorite authors that I enjoy reading. This book might be better than his well known titles because it's well put together with perfect tone.

Referencing South of the Boarder from Nat King Cole is something that you expect from his author. His books are almost like poetry.

ok

this took a while to get into... my least favourite of his books so far but it gets better as it goes on.